Friday Favorite: Snapz Pro X for Mac

By Steve Sande

I was straining my brain today — admittedly not a hard thing for me to do — trying to think of a topic for a Friday Favorite. The answer was right in front of me all the time, since one of the most-used applications on my Macs is Snapz Pro X (US$69) from Ambrosia Software.

Snapz Pro X, currently at version 2.1.5, is a deceptively powerful Mac application that hides out of the way until you need it. What does it do? It lets you capture pictures and video of anything on your Mac.

For those of us who write for tech blogs, create technical documentation, or write books, Snapz Pro X is a fast way to capture full or partial screens. You press the usual Command-Shift-3 to take a screenshot, and the simple Snapz Pro X user interface appears...

The four buttons let you capture a full screen, an object on the screen (such as a window or menu), a selection from the screen, or capture full-motion video of action on the screen. Once you select one of the buttons, a second panel appears. This one is for capturing a selection:

As you can see, you can change the color depth, file type, scale the image, make the cursor visible or invisible, add a watermark, and otherwise make the image look great. For videos, the settings panel changes to let you set the frame rate and a number of other settings.

I literally use Snapz Pro X dozens of times per day for the shots used in many TUAW posts as well as in my work. I've tried other similar packages, but Snapz Pro X remains my favorite. If you use a separate utility for taking screenshots, what do you use? Leave a comment.

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